Tips/advice on geting a guitar sim sounding a little less fake?

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Robert W

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May 13, 2009
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Just wondering if anyone could spare some simple tips on how to make a guitar amp sim sound a little less fake. Not looking for any miracles, just some easy DIY type of stuff to take a little of the "fake" sound out of a heavy rhythm tone.
Am using this for a chain,

TSE 808> Lepou 456/BTE Juicy 77> LeCab w/ V30/K100/T100 impulses> Ruby Tube> Reverb

Any tips/advice would be really appreciated.
 
I would have to agree that there are no miracles.
To be honest my best advice would be time, patience, trial and error.
Over time you will train your ears and it will help with making sims seem more natural
 
nosgulstic said:
post a clip of your tone
Click to expand...

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1115633

I'm still getting used to the hipshot bridge, so the palm muting isn't as good as I'd like it to be atm, but I'm working on it.

The clip is just 12 measure of the same riff. Nothing fancy, but a good riff none the less for gauging the kind of tone I'm after.

Well, the thing is, I couldn't really get the kind of tone I really wanted because a) I lack the $$$ to get a JCM 800 and a decent cab, b) Couldn't crank one here even if I did and c) Have limited recording resources.

That said, I basically tried to come as close as the sims I have allowed to what I was after.
 
800 & 4K usually have the most noticeable problems for me. You should use the reverb as a seperate bus so you can send multiple guitars to it. Are you low and High passing at all?. Try lowering the gain on the simulator and then adding something like a saturation plug in like FerricTDS, or TeslaPro from Variety of Sound(free) at the end of the chain. Also make sure you aren't bombing the input of any item on your chain.
 
what i mostly do for this is using the LEAST ammount of vst's in the chain, use a screamer, then your fave ampsim, then your fave impulse, and spend time getting the very best out of it, not using anything else, then when you have an amazing tone, slap an eq there and get rid of the stuff you don't want in your spectrum, i find additive eq to be like... TOO fake in the digital realm, you can't just get harmonics from nowhere so, i prefer substractive for "realism".
 
reg3n said:
what i mostly do for this is using the LEAST ammount of vst's in the chain, use a screamer, then your fave ampsim, then your fave impulse, and spend time getting the very best out of it, not using anything else, then when you have an amazing tone, slap an eq there and get rid of the stuff you don't want in your spectrum, i find additive eq to be like... TOO fake in the digital realm, you can't just get harmonics from nowhere so, i prefer substractive for "realism".
Click to expand...

Actually, that's exactly what I just did.

I scrapped the chains I was using and went back to a simple TS> Amp> Cab chain. I got a couple of pretty good TS sims and am having some good results w/ those. As for amps, Juicy 77 has been giving some of the best results so far, along w/ the the LePous and the X30s. For cabs, I went back to the Recabinet stuff.

One thing I've found so far that has helped to get rid of a little of the "fake" sound is to back off on the mids. I know this flies in the face of convention, but that's what I found to be working for me atm.

Once I got the amp sounding as good as I could get it, I sic'd the EQ on it. Results have been good so far. For a starting point, I doing a high pass at around 100-150 and a low pass at around 12K. Pumping up a little between the 400 -800, depending on the amp, sounded good, as did a little bump at the 1700s and 3K range.

Again, I wouldn't call the tones I getting amazing, but considering my resources, I think they would be considered servieable.

Surprisingly, I seem to be getting more of an Orange tone than anything else.

Will post some clips later.

And, as always, thanks to everyone for their input.
 
awesome, a clip would be cool, what i do lately with tones is getting a barely good tone and strong drums seem to be more important than a super defined bass line, there's a thread here talking about getting rid of more than 12k and above freq's, lowpassing at something like 8-9khz, it really gives amazing results with new strings! i'll have to try juicy77 again, it's good stuff fer sure.
 
reg3n said:
awesome, a clip would be cool, what i do lately with tones is getting a barely good tone and strong drums seem to be more important than a super defined bass line, there's a thread here talking about getting rid of more than 12k and above freq's, lowpassing at something like 8-9khz, it really gives amazing results with new strings! i'll have to try juicy77 again, it's good stuff fer sure.
Click to expand...

Uhggg!

4 straight hours of knob turning. Been working w/ 2 X30s and 3 Preampus sims. Back to work tomorrow on the LePou and Juicy 77 heads.

Not so much trying to get a bunch of different tones, as trying to find the one amp that does the tone I'm after the best.

As for amps, it seems I'm getting a ton of mileage out of Recabinet's "Tangerine" 4X12, especially the 6L6 cone/cone grill and the EL34 cone/cone grill.

Interesting about the more aggressive low passing, I'll have to give it a try. It's funny, I remember someone mentioning once that they low passed at 10K and that elicited a chorus of "WTFs?".

Will post some clips tomorrow for sure.
 
Here's some tone tests I did today,

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1115633

Amps used were Juicy 77, LePou Lecto, LeGION, Le456, Preampus C-15 and 60 and 2 X30s. Cabs were either Recabinet 6L6s and EL34s mic'd w/ a 421.

Please note that these clips are not intended as mixes. The drums are there just to keep time and give me an idea of how the guitar tone is interacting w/ it.

The chain on all of these is TS>Amp>Cab>EQ

As you may notice there's not much variety in the tones. What I trying to find out is which amp sim can do the "kind" of tone I'm aiming the best. Right now I think the front runners are the LePou sims.

As for the EQ, they all have high passes set at 150 and low passes at 12K. And, depending on the amp, there's also some EQing at the 400s, 800s, 1.5K -1.7Ks, 3Ks and some at 7K-8K.

Any advice on how to improve any of these would, of course, be greatly appreciated.
 
now you need a massive low end :p ,apart from the bass need, sometimes parallel comp works for me (in the whole mix) or things like a mono bus of the whole thing, in mono, really low, eq'd, but that's kind'a getting to much into shit, i'd say you're good go go and try the tone in a full song, with bass, drums tewaked to fit, compression, eq, multiband comp, etc, till the end of times, that's definately how to build a good TACT. heh. Lepou's plugs are THE shit.
 
reg3n said:
now you need a massive low end :p ,apart from the bass need, sometimes parallel comp works for me (in the whole mix) or things like a mono bus of the whole thing, in mono, really low, eq'd, but that's kind'a getting to much into shit, i'd say you're good go go and try the tone in a full song, with bass, drums tewaked to fit, compression, eq, multiband comp, etc, till the end of times, that's definately how to build a good TACT. heh. Lepou's plugs are THE shit.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I would have added some bass, but the one I got now, a cheapo 6 string, is in need of a set-up badly.

As for the drums, they're just there to keep time. When I finish up my guitar tracks, then they go to a real drummer.

I was kind of surprised by the LePou stuff, tbh. When I first tried them I thought they were kind of crappy, then again I really didn't know how to dial them in properly. Probably still don't, but a least I can get a serviceable tone out of them now. The X30s are ok, but they seem to need more EQing than the LePou stuff does. The Preampus sims are interesting, but then again, like the X30s, they seem to need a little more in the way of EQing than the LePous. I think I'm going to try various combinations of the 3 LePou sims, as they seem to be giving me the best results atm.

As for the tech stuff you mentioned, I have to admit that it's a little out of my league atm. I can record my guitar tracks, but that's about it. :D
 
Drop that low pass to 8KHz or lower. You don't need all that high end fizzy junk up there. Hell, even 7KHz is great.
That's one easy step right there to making it sound better.
 
All of those clips inherently will sound similar because the impulse at the end of the chain is giving it a similar sound. If you were to use each amp sim and turn the impulse off, it'd probably sound different for each sim.
 
Harry Hughes said:
Drop that low pass to 8KHz or lower. You don't need all that high end fizzy junk up there. Hell, even 7KHz is great.
That's one easy step right there to making it sound better.
Click to expand...

This is very interesting. I was under the impression that 12K was the ideal low pass point.

I've been doing a little mix and matching w/ the sims, trying to find the ideal combination of amp/impulse. Right now I'm using the Lecto in the center channel, the X30 Sov in the left and the Preampus C-15 in the right.

Here's the same Misfits London Dungeon cover w/ a bass track and those sims w/ the low pass set at 8K,

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=1115633

Track is 'London Dungeon w/ bass and 8k low pass."

Forgive the sloppy sounding bass, but it's in need of a set-up, so the mild distortion setting was needed.

I think the low pass at 8K sounds very good. It seemed to tighten the tone of considerably, at least that's how it sounded on my end, and got rid of a little more of that "fake" sim sound.

I guess my next question would be how to get a bass tone that compliments the guitar tone. Any suggestions?
 
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